Episode #728 - Different Is Better with Sunny McGaw, Marketing Entrepreneur & Founder

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Harry Wydell. What are some of the basics that the most important things for entrepreneurs to be thinking about for marketing? You know, if they could, you could take entrepreneurs they're already existing and put them in your class and they're listening to you now, what would you think is the most important thing for them to learn about marketing?

Different is better than better.

Run that by me again.

Different is better than better.

Okay.

That is so important, especially these days, Larry. It's so noisy, right? The environment is so noisy and we have a fire hose of ideas and information and content coming at us all the time. So if you don't stand out and you look like the next person, the next store, the next opportunity, you're just going to be lost, right? Especially as an entrepreneur because your budget isn't as big and so you have to scream a little louder. So different is better than better. And an example that I spoke about recently was, I'm not sure if you've heard of a. It's a water company called Liquid Death in the States. I think it's out of, it's definitely out of America. I just can't remember where. Colorado. I'm thinking, anyhow, it's water. It's water. And instead of sounding like Aquafina or Dysante or Evian or Smart Water, they completely went the other direction. It's in a can and it's called Liquid Deaths. And there's nothing, there's no caffeine. There's no, it's not, it's nothing but water. But they had an insight that bands and people who did extreme sports didn't always want to drink Red Bull and things like that. They didn't always want to be like caffeinating themselves or with monster energy drinks. A lot of the time what they do is they take a monster energy drink and they put water in it so they could still look cool while they were drinking water, clean old water. So what an insight. What an incredible insight. And then they, they took it and they ran with it. So now Liquid Death is so far above all those other players that I mentioned because they went different. So I say the most important thing, be bold. You know, people try different things, try different streams. You know, it's wherever you want to be as social media, for one. Obviously you want to fish where the fish are. So if you're, if you're a. Let's say you're launching a cosmetics company, you might want to be on Instagram. That's a, that makes sense. It's a good place to be. But also it might be an interesting idea to try something completely different. So if you're going to be on two social media, try what it's like to fish where the fish are, be on Instagram, and then maybe try something really unconventional, like you want to be on LinkedIn and you're going to push your cosmetics company on LinkedIn or Snapchat or whatever, whatever that is for you. And I think that's a great philosophy and stories of.

What other stories would you use to illustrate that point when you were teaching or that you would, you know, because when you, you know, we live these principles in our life, you just can't help but notice when it comes across. You'd see it playing out in the real world. You know, politicians have winning and losing strategies, governments have winning and losing strategies, companies have, you know, coaches on teams. But you just, like, hear it. It's like, oh, Lord, you know, you know, you know, that ain't going to work. And it's just, it's fun. And it's fun when you know how these things play out. You can see it play out over years, you know, like, like a foot, you know, any kind of professional sports team. You can hear the coach talking in the preseason and then stay in touch with him as a season unfold and you get a pretty good idea how this season is going to go.

Yeah.

You know, with his intent. You know, again, it goes to the intent of, you know, you got to be, like, in the center of the bullseye of clear on what you're going for. That's why I love, you know, I respond to the ideas without action are worthless. And it's like, you've got to have results. And so it's so easy for that to get lost in the minutia. And you, I'm sure, experience that as a creative director, I would imagine. Is that true?

Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. You can get lost in. What's an example? Well, I love a good font. Like, I love fonts. I could like, they're just delicious to me. I just love fonts.

You would have something in common with Steve Jobs.

That's right. Yes. He. He loved fonts. And we're also, you know, grateful to him because we get fonts now because of Steve Jobs. But does it really matter if you're using, like, Helvetica Light or Helvetica extra light? Not really. Not really. As much as I'd love. I could like again, till the cows come home. I could talk about that. But to, to your original question about whether other stories that illustrate that point. I think one of the greatest stories is Sarah Blakely. So she. Yeah, smacks, right. First. First youngest female billionaire self made ever. I mean, and she, she was laser focused on her goal. She was laser focused on her goal. So. And she took action, right? We know she sold fax machines in the daytime so she could work on her startup at night. She learned how to design her own packaging and write her own patents. Right. To save, save money. She knocked on door after door after door to get into a manufacturer who finally agreed to work with her. And then when she eventually finally got a meeting with Neiman Marcus, she almost blew it. She made that buyer try on the Spanx to see how great they were and then she made the deal. Right? So that's action after action after action. And I think it was, I can't remember what timeframe that was, but that was not short. Like she had to stick with it for a long time and, and be laser focused on those goals. And even when a marvelous story and.

Even when it is short, it seems like it's long. When you're living it day to day to day, it seems like it's excruciatingly slow. I was talking to one of my assistants today and she's got, you know, the beautiful young boy. And I said it's just amazing with kids where as you're going through it, they're growing up. It's just like every minute you get to watch them every minute, every second. And this, that it seems so excruciating to, you know, the little progress and everything. But then at the end of a year, it's like they've become little people, you know. Yeah, this, they could do that. You know, you don't, you know, they don't want you to help.

The days are, the days are young, the days are long, but the years are short.

Yeah. Very, very good. And so, yes, one thing that, that you and I know is that you've got to keep going when it seems like all is lost. And I'm sure you've had some experiences like that or know some stories of where people have it. It seemed like it, there's, you know, there's, it's not going to happen. And then they, you know, one thing I want to say about the leader, about, you know, like being a creative Director and eating good. Sidetracked. The, the. I've always thought the most important to get results, which is what a leader's got to do. Get the team to have the result. The leader's got to make sure the most important thing stays the most important thing.

Oh, absolutely.

If a leader can't do that because everybody's getting rattled, the leader is more likely to be more rattled than everybody else. But if the leader gets rattled and gets diverted like 1 degree off course over the course of a year, you don't even have to last a month and the company goes in the dumper. And so you have to keep the most important thing. The most important thing. That's the reason you hold, you know, the wheel, you know, car. You don't want to have, you know, one degree off and then you hit the tractor trailer, it come in from the other. That's awesome.

Yeah.

So you've got, I'm sure you've had some experiences with that. And it's one thing to, to keep on going. Like, the most important thing is we get the job done regardless of what kind of things are against us right now. We've got, you know, you use this thing with your planning your trip, like anybody can do it.

And.

But you got to have a plan. You got to work it out.

Yeah.

And so that's pretty much the way you've got to approach any kind of crisis you get into is like, there's a way out of this. We got to get a plan. And so, you know, we just, you know, we're one idea away from an explosion, that type thing, you know, and so what, what have you. How have you seen that play out in life?

You have to have a mindset right now when things are good.

Yeah.

That things are going to get crummy. But you know what you're going to do, you're going to see it as an opportunity.

Yeah.

Not maybe an opportunity. An opportunity because when things start crashing in, everybody's in panic mode. But if you've already got the mindset set up to say, okay, yes, things are getting really crappy and they're going to be difficult for a while, but there's an opportunity here and no one else is looking for it because they're busy panicking. I'm going to be the one to find it.

Yeah.

That is an important, important. There's, you know, what do they say? There's an opportunity in every chaos and every catastrophe. I live by that. So when Covid hit, I was two months into a brand new business with a partner, Dr. Ivan Joseph. He's a. He's a really well known public speaker, motivational speaker. His TED talk has 26 million views. It's called the Skill of Self Confidence. It's incredible. And he's a president of a local university in Toronto. So he and I were high school friends and we had just formed a business, a leadership business, leadership training. And it was about in person events. In person events two months before COVID hit. So just appreciate how bad that was. It was just an absolute disaster. I mean, we all had disasters during COVID that was quite bad. So we thought, all right, so we can feel really sorry for ourselves for like a day, but after that we're going to find this opportunity. So what a lot of speakers did was they said, okay, well now I'm a virtual speaker. And then the results were kind of sometimes good, sometimes bad, but, you know, they weren't necessarily very polished. What Ivan and I did was we said, halt. Let's actually learn to be really good speakers virtually. So we invested in the right equipment. You know, we built out a studio in his home so that the sound would be great and the lighting would be great and the set was great. And he learned like, best because presenting, you know, presenting on stage is quite different than, you know, sitting here talking to you. So he learned how to be really, really sharp and good. So then when we relaunched about a month later, we hit it running and he had the best year. Like that year was better than his seven cumulative years before that.

Wow.

Yes, yes, it was really successful. So again, that's, you know, see the opportunity, pause, pause as needed, pivot, but don't quit. And that's the thing is most people quit when things get tough. We know that that's stating the obvious. Stick it out. Because often that's just before you see some incredible success, right?

And while you're sticking it out, the, the best thing you can do, you know, it's like, I got to do something. Get the facts. Because what happens when crisis hits is the emotions flood everything, cause you to be, you know, over exaggerate how bad it is, you know, you just start tumbling, you know, and the way you reel yourself back in, like if you're fishing, you know, you reel yourself back in is like, get the facts. Let's just see how bad this is. And then in the process, you can open your eyes up to the other possibilities, which is what you're talking about, you know, and so as you right now you're working, are you focusing on working with Female entrepreneurs or is that just the way it's turned out? Talk about.

No, I am, I, I am. A great question. So here's a little experiment you can do sometime, or any of your, listen listeners can do sometime. Go onto Google or whatever your search engine is and look at top 10 books for entrepreneurs, top 10 books by entrepreneurs, top 10 podcasts for entrepreneurs, top 10 thought leaders in entrepreneurship. Man, man, man, man. You might, you might encounter one woman in there. Amy Porterfield, Mel Robbins. Not sure. But I realized that, you know, this is really important because there is representation is very important and that the idea of if you can see it, you can be it. We know, we know this from sports, right. We know that the Williams sisters talk about this. So I felt that there was just such a room that women wanted to, or such an opportunity. Women would love to be coached in entrepreneurship by other women because our, our needs are unique. Right. And I especially like to work with women, let's say my age. I like to call it women in their prime. I don't say middle age because that's just, that's just kind of a gross term. So I say women in their prime because there are so many women in our prime who are starting businesses because their kids are out of the home, right. They're less needed to do household things. And perhaps a lot of the time, a lot of the women I've worked with, they've, they've had big careers 10 or 20 years ago, they've got a big education and now they have all this time, they often have money and they were ready to invest in something. So they are just prime, just wonderful people to work with. So that is, that's who I'm focusing on now. And I'm just, I'm very fortunate to have that opportunity.

Yeah. And so how are, how, how do you market, you know, as you go into this thing, you've got to let people know. So how do you market this service exists and to attack, attract the attention of the female entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs.

I do what a lot of other people in thought leadership in general do. I participate in podcasts like this fabulous opportunity. I write a lot about it because I have a lot to say about it. I think about it all the time. I do, I do offer some one on one coaching. I do some group coaching. I have a bunch of free resources on my website, which is the sunnymogaw.com and, and I'm, I'm developing some courses because I, I can't, you know, one on one coaching is Wonderful. And I love it so much. But you can only serve so many people.

Right, right.

So I've, I've kind of come up with, okay, so what are the questions I'm asked all the time and what are the things that always people are struggling with? So that's where I'm developing some courses online that people can go to and get a lot of the tidbits that they want. And I really like fast wins for entrepreneurs too. Again, taking action. Right. So I like to get, I like to get people in a position where they can see something tangible quickly. You know, a week like this is not the like long six month play where maybe something will happen. No, you need to see action quickly when you're an entrepreneur. Right, right. That's what feeds us.

Right. And so you've been doing that. Is that an outgrowth of what you were doing with Ivan Joseph or is that you're doing that together?

It's an outgrowth. But we do still support each other. Of course, but it's, it's an outgrowth of that business. So when Ivan and I joined forces, as I said in 2020, 2020 when the pandemic started, we, we grew into a point where he was self sufficient. Yeah, right. I was giving him the fuel and then all of a sudden, you know, he was coasting. Not coasting. He's still wonderful trajectory. But he didn't need me anymore. And I love, I like building. Yeah, right. I don't want to sustain, I don't want to plateau. I like to build things. So that's what I decided to do. I'm helping other people the way I help Ivan.

Congratulations. It's been such a great time talking with you. A lot of great content for people to think about, to use ideas, duplicatable ideas and to wrap things up, up the well, we like to give the guests the final word. And so what would you, if you had a group of ladies or just entrepreneurs right now that have stayed with. I always like to give a reward for the people to stay with us the whole time through. So what, what would you want to say as a final word?

I love it. The perfect time does not exist. Okay. Take action before you feel completely ready. That's key because that's getting you out of your comfort zone. Nothing good and certainly nothing great happens in your comfort zone. So the best teacher is doing. So get after it. Start today and keep swinging.

The best teacher is learning. So great. Thanks so much Sonny and looking forward to. And that's sonnymcgaw.com, did you say the website?

It's thesunnymcgaw.com thesunnnymcgaw.com Very official and a.

Lot of information there. And so we look forward to seeing this business explode because I'm sure you're gonna, you have one track record on our trajectory on, on what you do. And so I know it's going up and can't wait to have you back in the future to talk about all the great things that are getting ready to happen to you. And maybe by that time you would have been to the Himalaya base camp.

Hey, there you go. I love it. Thanks so much, Larry. This is great.

Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Sonny. Goodbye.

Goodbye.

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